While a vehicle is traveling, an emergency might arise in which the driver of the vehicle is no longer able to drive the vehicle. For example, the health condition of the driver might suddenly deteriorate. To address such a critical situation, devices for automatically stopping vehicles upon the occurrence of emergencies have been developed. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 8,942,880 (claim 5) discloses that when an emergency occurs, automatic stop control of a vehicle is not performed until the detection of both a stop intention expressed by an occupant in the vehicle through an operation (such as a switch operation) other than a braking operation and a confirmation parameter indicating that the driver is in a state of being unable to drive the vehicle (hereinafter referred to as “unable-to-drive state”).
In the technique disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 8,942,880, if a confirmation parameter indicating that the unable-to-drive state of the driver has not been detected or estimated for some reason even though a stop intention made by operating a switch or by performing any other suitable operation has been detected, an occupant's unintended situation (rejection of a stop request) might occur. On the contrary, if automatic stop control is carried out immediately upon detection of either a stop intention or a confirmation parameter, a misoperation of the switch or a wrong judgment of the confirmation parameter might cause an occupant's unintended situation (execution of automatic stop control).